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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22825921">Their Name is No One</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/capripian/pseuds/capripian'>capripian</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Mechanisms (Band), Ulysses Dies at Dawn - The Mechanisms (Album)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Trans Character, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Other, canon amounts of laser gun, just like an exploration of ulysses?, yknow how it is. yearning.</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 12:48:48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>914</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22825921</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/capripian/pseuds/capripian</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Ulysses is a story. An idea. A concept. Abstractions do not need to feel what people do. Does a story mourn the deaths on their hands? Do ideas seek that rush of war that they can never escape from? Does a concept cry for their wife, getting to lie with her forever? Ulysses is not a person, they think. They cannot fool themself. They will be unique, stand out from the City's crowd. Even if it kills them. And they hope it will.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>(mentioned) - Relationship, Ulysses/Penelope</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>28</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Their Name is No One</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This was written after I had been on a 7 hour bus ride, so its coherence and linearity isn't the most precise, but we all have to make sacrifices for the sake of falling in love with a nonbinary war criminal.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>     Ulysses isn't anyone, really. Average. Run of the mill. Just another fucker on the city streets. Stole a diamond, fought a war, but that’s hardly anything. Not an Olympian, not rich enough to see the sky or feel the sea’s caress. Just a person. Even the Mechanisms themselves know so little about Ulysses: Black, blue eyes, and that seems to be all. They're a mystery, they're nothing.</p>
<p>     They start in a bar, another patron, another soul trying to drown out reality with copious amounts of whiskey. They're a soldier, and is that not the position in which you are the most uniform? Just another piece of ammunition for the generals to load into a gun. You are only distinguished by your use: and so Ulysses proves their worth, proves it in bloodshed and broken bone. Strife quickens their pulse, feeds the city's needs. Feeds the darkness inside them, and Ulysses tries to purify it with alcohol's harsh burn but fails.</p>
<p>     Ulysses renames themself No One, attempts to pull off a heist. Something to find some danger again. They become a shadow. Unknowable. The perfect thief. And yet their flaw emerges. They wish to be known. They wish to endure such mortifying ordeals, to be Someone. Someone Remembered. They know the Acheron lies at the end of their doomed existence. They know their fate will be to serve, just another cog in the machine. They scream their name, defiant. They will not bow.</p>
<p>     They have another way, a Vault, named in honor of their beloved wife. They wish to lie there beside her. Rebellion was never possible. Ulysses and their wife would be the only two to use the Vault. Seeping into the earth, letting their bones bask in the sunlight. The diamond did not matter, none of it mattered. They would be finished. Their life would end before the bots could cram them into yet another half-life of slavish devotion.</p>
<p>     They wished Elysium upon themself. They would be real, true, be a single person again. Whole, after so long being broken. The city would know their name. Ulysses.</p>
<p>     Ulysses, scourge of Ilium, mastermind behind the Slaughter’s Frequency. But the bloodshed and the madness did nothing but destroy people who tried to build something better. Ulysses, thief of the Eye of the Cyclops, scornful of Poseidon. But the gem is useless now, just another perfect diamond burden to carry for 20 years. Ulysses, leader of the truly dead, protector of the final tree. But the oak would not stay safe forever, and who would have the strength in their heart, the wit in their song, to bring death upon themself?</p>
<p>     Ulysses is No One. And they accept that. Ulysses is an idea, they think. They are not a person. They do not feel like a person, not in the way the rich can afford to with their long lives of sensation. They numb their pain. They are the soldier, the drunk, the mark, and that is all. They will be whoever the city needs them to be, and they won’t dream of any more.</p>
<p>     When they split the laser, when they realize they can finally live out their death with Penelope, they start to cry. And this does not make sense, because people cry. And Ulysses has spent so long being a phantom, an idea, that they can't remember this. Sure, the alcohol stench on their breath was emotion, and indeed so was the blood staining their chest, and yet. It is not the same.</p>
<p>     Ulysses has not cried in so long, they think, daring to step into the vault. They see the oak tree, making up a corner of a structure. A wedding bed. Penelope's bones rest there, and soon they would too. Together. </p>
<p>     The propaganda spinners say you can identify a corpse from the brain, that you can look at it in the Acheron, but Ulysses disagrees. A person is not the brain, the computing power snatched from their joy and sorrow. A person is the body: the scar on their cheek, the piercings in their eyebrow and below their full lips, the blood streaming down their body. (And the parts they dislike, as well, that feel odd and clumsy and unwanted, but still theirs).</p>
<p>     They let their body rest, lying next to their wife. They take out the pistol. Three shots left. Soldier, Drunk, Lover. They hold the gun to their brain first, but no. The Acheron would not be the overseer of their end. They hold the gun over their heart, and though the fabric binds tight they know the shot will hit its mark.</p>
<p>     The tree sways gently overhead, the sun shines upon their face. They do not hesitate. They do not look back. They fire the gun, and no one hears. Ulysses dies at dawn, the papers say. A dangerous rogue, a rebel against the families. Took out four suits with them. The vault remains unmentioned, unopened. The people do not quickly forget such a tale, but soon even Daedalus passes into the Acheron. He will not find them there. They did not die.</p>
<p>     Ulysses lives in every cycle of the sunrise, every beam of soft golden light shining upon the slowly regenerating planet. Thousands of years of honey-sweet light, tender shining upon a city falling. Every tree trunk, emerging out of the cracking steel ground, is their soul taking root. Ulysses is no one, and everyone, and nowhere, and everywhere, and finally satisfied.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>     And so the tale ends.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I hope you liked this, and if so I'd love if you gave a kudos, wrote a comment, or just shared it around! Thank you!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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